[betamax]

Hello, this is my first venture into this forum after it was recommended in the beginner's advice forum.

Here is the photograph.



I realize it is not a great picture and come here mostly looking for advice. One of the things about the composition that I missed when I took the photo is that the lady had something sticking out of her head in the background... is that too distracting? Also, for this kind of photo, is it better to go for a more shallow DoF than what I have or are the people and building in the BG not too distracting? Any advice that provided would be greatly appreciated.

The lens used was the DA 50-200mm

It's not a bad effort, something to build on. You need to learn to take in the whole scene through the viewfinder. See how the buildings are leaning?
You have pretty good separation between the subject and the people in the background.
I don't see to much of a problem with her having something sticking out of her head because the people in the background are far enough away for that kind of thing to be acceptable.
A slightly wider aperture (5.6 maybe) would have blurred those background people even more which would have been nice.
The subject is not that well placed in the picture, if you had been a bit more to the right, we would have seen more of her face, the sculpture wouldn't have been coming out of her head and you would have had less problem with the leaning buildings and the overexposed sky. She should have been a little left of centre because she was looking to your right.
It's plain to see that she is a small woman and it works well in this case but it is usually better to take the shot from a lower perspective. Just crouch a little.

[foxglove]

The first thing I noticed were the leaning buildings... but that's easily fixed. The brightness of the sky in the background is also distracting and tends to draw the eye to those crooked buildings. I think it would be a stronger image without the sky. It would be nice to leave as much of the buildings in the background as possible, though - I think her surroundings make it a more interesting story. Everybody else in the image is crowded off in the distance, moving, talking, doing, while she is standing alone, quite still. Including the buildings emphasizes that isolation. Lose the distracting sky, and I think the eye would be drawn straight to her. I agree with Gary, though, that she needs to have "somewhere to go" to the right. As it is, particularly if you crop to remove the distracting sky, she's quite close to the side of the image to which she is facing, and the human brain doesn't seem to like that.

Julie

[Ash]

Good suggestions already.
Go back to the fundamentals of composition and perspective - rule of thirds, horizons, camera-up and down, as well as DoF, and you may find a lot of your critique will be there also.

[wallyb]

The framing needs to be fixed, and the image is mostly underexposed because of the bright bit of sky. Here is just a quick edit of what I'd do to the image as-is to make it pop more, sorry I can't offer further advice but I think it'd be helpful.

Oh, and definitely keep the aperture wider (lower number) when doing portraits like this.

[adamkean]

nice fix up - this capture has potential, not bad tho in the original

[Zewrak]

Yes, it is annoying. To be blunt. For me the initial reaction was, om my god, that guy has a woman growing out his arse. But don't worry, it happens to everyone, we all fail to see stuff in the viewfinder now and then. Had you taken a few steps closer and to the right, and lowered the camera a bit, you would most likely been able to have a wall as background. Other then that, people have adviced you on composition already. For me the motif is the woman. Hence, fill the viewfinder with.. the woman. I know it might be hard to walk up close to strangers and shoot them. But it's part of streetphotography to learn to approach people.